Do iTunes gift cards work with mp3 players other than iPod?
I purchased my son a Sharper Image mp4 player and while it says in the manual it will not work with sites such as Napster or iTunes that have secured mp3 downloads, you can download the music and burn it to a cd then copy it to the mp3 player. Which seemed to me like a big hassle. What you can do is find out the brand, and then probably look the manual up on their website to see if it would be compatible. I use eMusic for my sons’ it worked really well, though their selection was more a little more limited than napster or iTunes. I hope that helps! Sources: itunes.com, eMusic.
Tracks purchased from iTunes are *usually* encoded with the Fairplay DRM software that only iPods can play. You can get around this by: 1) using the card to buy tracks from labels that sell “unlocked” music, like EMI. These are known as “itunes plus” tracks. They used to cost more, but now sell for $.99 like everything else. 2) buy anything you want with the card, then burn the tracks to a cd and re-import them from the CD to iTunes. This removes the DRM so you can use the music with any player. Sources: http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.
iTunes songs have DRM on them that ties them to the iTunes program and the iPod. However, recently Apple has added the ability to download a lot of songs without the DRM for about $.30 more per song, which would work on any MP3 player. Another option is to burn the songs to a CD and then rip them back into any MP3 program, but that is obviously a big hassle. Amazon’s MP3 download service is 100% DRM free, so they would work on any player. Maybe an Amazon gift certificate would be a good idea, if they work for the MP3 download store.
